


Played

by polyphaga



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Goodbye, M/M, pinball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8764114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyphaga/pseuds/polyphaga
Summary: Another stupid Modern AU MKaz Meet Cute Concept. V's hobby is collecting pinball machines.As Usual, this is Kawaiibooker's Medic and Kawaiibooker's fault.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kawaiibooker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kawaiibooker/gifts).



“Will you miss it?”

As soon as Kaz worked up the nerve to ask the question, he was cut off by a clatter of bells and machinery, of lights flickering to life. The collector who delivered the machine to the bar carefully crawled out from where he’d been fiddling with the plug to get it working, and gently bumped the back of his head on the bottom of the pinball machine. He paused, rubbing it for a moment, and backed out more carefully, grinning up at Kaz from a squatted position and giving him a thumbs up.

“Well?”

“Oh, you were asking me something while I was down there? Sorry.” His voice was soft, he seemed a little shy, but now that he’d brought the pinball table to life Kaz could tell he was stifling an edge of pride.

“I just wanted to know if you’d miss it, that’s all.”

“Oh…” He paused for a moment, looking at the machine as he assumed his full height again and lightly tented his fingers on the glass. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I will. Even if I’ve got like 10 in the basement at home.”

“Mmhm,” Kaz stepped out from behind the bar to get a closer look at the machine Boss had bought. It certainly was flashy, with pulsing lights and painted flames licking up the side of the cabinet, so he hoped the bar would make a quick turnover on it. “Shame. Did you just need the money, or--?”

He laughed abruptly in response, still hunched over the table, making sure every detail on the playfield was in place and working. “Oh no, it’s definitely moreso that I needed the room.” He leaned back, taking one last good look at the backglass. “Fireball. It’s a real classic, but not the sort of machine I have a nostalgic attachment to, I guess.” He sighed, leaning back on the bar. “That should be it. Want to give her a spin?”

“Can I get you a drink first? Uh…”

“Vincente. And sure, rum and coke?” He stuffed his hand deep in his pocket as he waited for Kaz to finish mixing the drink, carefully winding a piece of thread around his fingers. Kaz also made a drink for himself before walking towards Vincente and handing him one.

“Cheers,” Kaz said, smiling and clinking his glass on Vincente’s, who nervously looked away from his surprisingly intimidating, shaded eyes. He gripped his fist around what was in his pocket and took a gulp of the rum and coke before setting his drink down. He didn’t drink much, so the slight sting of alcohol burned his tongue a bit, but it was still satisfyingly sweet, mostly tasting like cola.

“You wanna demonstrate?” Kaz asked.  “I’ve… actually never played one of these.”

Vincente pulled the quarter attached to a bit of dental floss out of his pocket, but paused before taking his place in front of the machine.

“Never? Really? Not even as a kid?”

“I grew up in Japan,” Kaz admitted after a bit of a pause. “I only moved here just before starting college. I guess I played around with Pachinko machines a bit but… Never seriously.”

“Pachinko, I’ve seen some of those around. A lot of people collect both.” Vincente expertly slotted the quarter into the machine before bobbing it back into his hand with a tug of the string as soon as the machine came to life. He noticed Kaz had his eyebrows raised and pressed a finger to his lips teasingly before yanking the plunger back. “Don’t tell your boss, ok?” He looked away from Kaz as the sound of the ball rolling down the table demanded his attention, and gradually worked himself into a quiet trance, lobbing the flippers perfectly and with 100% focus, what he felt would be a respectful goodbye to the machine.

He didn’t realize how long he’d been playing when he took a step back with a groan as the third of the balls finally sailed clean between the two bottom flippers. As he did, he rubbed shoulders with Kaz, who had been standing just behind him, watching the whole time.

“Sorry,” Vincente said, pulling himself closer to the table and awkwardly taking another gulp of the drink. The ice was half-melted, and Kaz had long since drained his. How long had he been playing?

“It’s fine,” Kaz responded. “You seemed like you were having fun. And it was… kind of interesting.”

Vincente took that as a cue to do his quarter trick again. As he continued to play, he was keenly aware of Kaz hovering close behind him, watching. Kaz craned his neck when he made a good shot, tensed when a ball slipped between the flippers. He wasn’t one to lose his cool when being watched, you got over that pretty quickly in arcades, but they were the only two in the bar. Somehow, it felt more nerve-wracking than if there was a whole bustling crowd around him. He grimaced, not even hitting triple-figures on the scoreboard before all three balls were used up that time. Kaz didn’t seem to notice the difference, apparently waiting for him to play again.

“You know, that trick you do…”

“Yeah?”

“I never really paid for playing pachinko, either,” Kaz said with a smirk.

“Oh really? But you seem so clean-cut…”

“Is that meant to be sarcastic?”

“Of course not,” Vincente teased, snagging himself another free play. He lobbed the ball a few times before hazarding a question. “So, what was it like?”

“The Pachinko parlor?”

“Mmhm.”

“I dunno, my mom just dropped me off there sometimes, my parents were both away during the day a lot… Never really played the electronic machines, but they did have one old mechanical one that the lady running the place would let me just sit around and mess with since everyone else only wanted to play the new ones, anyways.” Kaz smiled, a bit surprised at how comfortable he felt disclosing details from his childhood through the topic Vincente had brought up. Usually he avoided it like the plague. His English had gotten good enough and thanks to his American father he didn’t immediately come off as a foreigner, an outsider. “The old-fashioned machine she had… was from the 70s, I think? It had a train on the big jackpot slot so I loved it.”

“Trains, huh?”

“I thought they were neat, as a kid.”

“As a kid… right…”

Kaz gave the machine a quick jostle with his hip, activating the TILT alarm and causing the ball in play to slide helplessly down to the bottom.

“That’s what you get.”

“Am I being asked to leave?” Vincente wondered aloud. Kaz gave a short laugh.

“If you don’t start being a bit nicer, maybe. But the boss’ll be here soon, it’s almost time to open up, so I’d say you should probably only stay if you can play with normal quarters.”

“Damn, left those at home.”

“Well, I suppose I can lend you one, since I ruined your game…”

 

Vincente had told himself it wasn’t a big deal to part with Fireball. It wasn’t a machine attached to childhood memories for him and parting with it certainly secured him a decent wad of cash because of its popularity. Still, he found himself returning to the bar, with a few quarters in his pocket, this time, several evenings a week. It was nice to play it somewhere other than his basement, where his skills could draw a crowd before handing it off to the next curious or nostalgic player. It reinvigorated his love of the machine, seeing it in its natural habitat rather than isolated, like a bug on a specimen tray, in his personal collection. Kaz would always give him a small, friendly wave and sneak him a drink, joking with him to have fun, but make sure to give the other kids a turn.

“You attract so many people to the machine I’m sure it pays for itself,” was his explanation, when Vincente pressed on whether he was allowed to give him so many free drinks. “But still, don’t tell the boss.”

Still, he would usually only have the one drink, and head home, not wanting to add to bustle of the evening, since Kaz usually began to get a bit swamped around 10 PM. He would quietly leave his glass on the bar, and slip out, cloaked by the growing crowd. This annoyed Kaz, though Vincente was totally oblivious to it.  How would he ever get a word in with this guy if he kept sneaking off?

Kaz had also been returning to an unexpectedly nostalgic pastime. He hadn’t used his old eBay account since he had sold off his collection of “rare,” “import” PlayStation titles, the ones he had just brought with him to the states from home. At first it had just been idle curiosity, trying to plug the right combination of words into Google to recover an image of the Pachinko machine he remembered. Then it became peeking into enthusiast forums, finding video clips of the machines in action, the metallic sounds of the balls clacking and bells ringing suddenly familiar again. Then he was scouring eBay, once he had confirmed the style and model type of _his_ machine. Just out of curiosity, you know?

There were a few that had been sold, but none for sale. He wasn’t supposed to be disappointed by that, right? And yet…

He wished he could talk to Vincente about it, to make sure he was looking everywhere, maybe he’d even let him know if the price was good. But every time, once he’d worked up the will to talk to him, Vincente had quietly left the bar and all that was left was the dilute remains of a rum and coke.

But for as long as there weren’t any of his machine for sale, it didn’t matter.

And then, one evening around two months later, as he was watching Vincente out of the corner of his eye while cleaning some glasses, Kaz felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Taking a second to glance down at it, he noticed it was an email alert.

“A New Listing Has Been Posted: VINTAGE 1970s NISHI—“

Kaz quickly looked around to make sure the boss was distracted before opening the alert. He could feel his chest tightening nervously as the page loaded, the pictures, of course, the last to come, but eventually it loaded enough that he was sure. This was the one.

So what now?

Kaz looked up, sure he had seen Vincente a moment ago, but there was the typical empty glass on the end of the bar again.

When he got home, he decided to take a chance and make a bid anyways.

 

“You have been outbid by NukeGato84.”

The first time Kaz saw the notification, he shrugged, and simply upped his bid by five dollars the next time he got home. He was in the lead for barely 15 minutes before his phone buzzed again.

“You have been outbid by NukeGato84.”

“Seriously?” He groaned and raised the price by 10 dollars.

“That’s typical,” someone on the collector’s forum posted when he went to groan about it. “Besides, it may even be someone who posts here.  But once it hits the average price he’ll probably back off.”

It went on, an occasional volley of five, ten, fifteen dollars back and forth, once or twice a day, until the auction headed into its final hours. The cost had soared past being a good deal and eventually even breached being sensible. It had become a war of attrition.

“Dude, you have to drop it, it’s DEF not worth it at this price. :/”

“What’s the story on why you want it so much anyways?”

“If it was someone else on the forum they would have posted about it now for sure. LOL. Unless someone’s f*****g with you ;)”

Kaz grumbled at the posts which had appeared in the thread about the auction since he’d left for work and returned home. He was in a sour mood. After holding on to his lead for most of the day, and thinking he’d seen the last of this damn NukeGato, he’d gotten a notification that he had, yet again, been outbid, just as things had begun to get crazy at work.

There were thirty minutes in the auction left when he got home. He bid.

“OMFG :shock: I was wondering why this thread was so active. Should have given up 100 dollars ago, my friend”

10 minutes go by. No new bid.

“OP You’re a newbie right? Is this your first machine? Big spend…”

20 minutes. Kaz began to feel a bit uneasy at the thought of spending so much on this thing, but how long would it be before another turned up?

“I guess it’s a nice design though, maybe worth it if you’re some sort of train obsessive lol”

25 minutes. Had the other guy really given up? It almost gave him a melancholy feeling.

28 minutes. 29. Kaz was watching the final seconds tick down, refreshing the page like mad, when suddenly:

“You have been outbid by NukeGato84.”

He scrambled for the increase bid option, but it was too late.

Auction ended.

 

The general consensus on the forums had been that Kaz had made a rookie mistake and gone after something a collector with deep pockets clearly had his heart set on. It was better this way. Competition would be less fierce next time and he’d be sure to get a decent price. Really, he’d been saved from getting ripped off by that mysterious stranger.

But when he found himself again cleaning glasses behind the bar a week later, as the evening wound down, he still couldn’t help but wonder how he’d be feeling if he’d only been a bit faster.

That bastard…

“Kaz?” He jumped at the sound of his name, rather than “Barkeep” or “Hey you,” knowing that he must have been zoning out in front of the boss or someone else he knew. The glass clattered against the bar as it slipped from his hands but he managed to pin it against the edge before it careened to the floor, preventing it from shattering. He took a second to catch his breath before looking up.

“Vincente?” He finished wiping off the glass and set it off to the side. “Aren’t you usually out of here by now?”

“Mmhm. But maybe I felt like felt like hanging around until someone’s shift ended.” Vincente waited, but Kaz only gave him a blank look. “I wanted to talk to you, idiot.” He slid a handful of bills across the table. “Get me another rum and coke while I wait.”

“Keep it,” Kaz responded, leaving the money on the table and grabbing a clean glass.

“You don’t get in trouble for giving out so many free drinks?”

Kaz spun around scowling. “Well, maybe so long as people don’t announce it to the whole bar,” He hissed.

Vincente frowned, not making a move to take the money off the bar. “You seem stressed. Did something happen?”

“I’m fine. Long night.” Kaz quickly mixed the rum and coke before sliding it across the bar, sulking off to polish some more glasses.

“Hey, stay and talk a bit? I’m leaving a good tip,” Vincente teased, gesturing to the pile of crumpled bills still on the bar.

Kaz gave a small smile, despite his foul mood.

“Fine. Why do you need to hang around until the end of my shift all of a sudden? You’re always the one who vanishes.”

“Vanishes?”

“Well, yeah, it’s like, one second I look up and you’re there and the next—“ Kaz stammered, blushing as he realized he’d just admitted to watching him.

“Sorry,” Vincente said with a grin. “Didn’t know you were looking for me.”

“God,” Kaz huffed, scowling again. “Just tell me what you need me for.”

“I think I’ll keep that a surprise,” Vincente said, taking a long sip of his drink.

Once the bar had closed up, Kaz followed Vincente to where his car was parked at the very back of the lot. It was late November, a bit chilly, and he could see the other man’s breath in small clouds as he breathed between his hands and rubbed them together to try and keep warm.

“Seriously, what is it?” Kaz asked, when he stopped to root for his car keys. Vincente only smiled at him, producing the keys from his back pocket and opening the back hatch of his car.

And there it was. The goddamn pachinko machine with the same train in the center, the same one he’d seen online, the same one he spent hours fooling around with as a kid.

“You fucking bastard,” Kaz muttered.

“What?”

“NukeGato84!” Kaz lunged forward, landing a half playful, half annoyed punch square on Vincente’s shoulder. He took a step back, looking startled as a deer in headlights. It took him a second to process.

“Oh my god. Wait, I should be saying that to you!”

“As if! You stole it from me!”

“You’re the one who kept jacking up the price recklessly!”

“Yeah, right! Takes two to tango, genius.” Kaz crouched down to get a closer look at the machine in the low light. “So what did you want, just to rub it in?”

“I had no idea, I swear.” Vincente gave a long sigh that turned into a gentle laugh. “I was always curious about these and I thought… hey, I finally have a reason to get one.”

“And that is?” Kaz stood up again, his stare at Vincente unusually direct.

“I... well… I think I’ve got it working, in a mechanical sense, it’s not so different from pinball… but… Now I know someone who knows how to play them. So could you show me how?” He watched anxiously as Kaz looked back at the machine, the expression on his face neutral and unreadable. “I’m sorry.” He waited for Kaz’s reaction, beginning to shiver slightly. His face flushed when Kaz threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer.

“No, no, it’s just… bringing back a lot of memories already. I’d love to. Thank you.”

Vincente smiled, leaning into Kaz and sliding his arm around his waist to huddle them together, and Kaz happily rested his head on his shoulder. Since when had he gotten so bold? Must have been the second drink. But for that moment, buying that machine for $124 higher than the suggested collector’s market price was completely worth it.

“Dorky username though,” Kaz said, his voice warm and soft, close to his ear.

“It’s my cat’s name…”

“Like I said, dorky.” Kaz leaned into him for a few more seconds before pulling away. “Well? Your place or mine? I wanna see this thing in action.”

“I mean, if you don’t mind, I’ve got all my tools at my place. Plus my other pinball machines… well, if you—“

“Sounds great. And you can finally teach me how to play, too.”

V smiled, unlocking the car door and letting Kaz crawl in before making his way around to the driver’s seat, happy he didn’t even have to ask.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2E0q1LkBQo :)


End file.
